Social and environmental protectionism
We can't afford your concern
Many Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) Indian feminist Vandana Shiva is against these in the Northern Hemisphere support the idea of restrictions on third world exports, and in favour restricting imports from countries which do not of a new kind of protectionism - of third world respect the environment, permit child labour, or markets against imperialism.
prevent the formation of free trade unions.
International Viewpoint #266 May1995
World Economy
The logic of free trade encourages ecological irresponsibility and social injustice. Jobs are destroyed in the millions, ecosystems are disrupted faster than ever before. And the creation of the World Trade Organisation to police free trade submits the governments of the world to the power of a new commercial oligarchy.
In India there is a massive development of the production of shrimps for export to Europe. It used to take 20 years for a new product to destroy the local ecosystem. But with shrimps and cur flowers bringing 5600% profits for the producers, middlemen and sellers, two or three years is enough.
Indian women are lying in front of bulldozers, to prevent the digging of new shrimp beds. We know that the shrimp industry blocks off the coast for traditional fishermen, and causes the salt-level to rise. Shrimp production is destroying the most fertile agricultural land in India. Local people's reaction is based on their immediate concerns - stop this process, and let the local community decide over all future investments! The solution is democratic decentralisation of real decision-making power. We must recognise the right of the population to have their say over toxic processes, pollution, and decisions which will increase unemployment.
But do the ecological clauses help us? No. They don't stop attacks on the environment because they don't touch free enterprise or free trade. Instead of giving local people the power to decide what kind of production, and investment there will 20 be, the ecological clauses take all power away from them. Ecosystems will still be destroyed. Free trade will increase. And in those cases where competition becomes a threat to Northern producers, Northern capitalists will invite Northern ecologists to help invoke and apply ecological clauses.
Nothing will stop multinationals like Dupont from building highly polluting chemical plants in India. It will still be in the interest of the North to concentrate dirty industry in the South, provided of course that these factories do not start to compete with Northern ones. The former Vice-President of the World Bank, Lawrence Summer used to argue that the third world was relatively under-polluted', that the cost of a life was less — in terms of the compensation you might have to pay if your worker catches cancer, and in terms of the cost of training a new worker. The disaster at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal is the proof — dead Indians are less expensive than dead Americans would have been.
Ecological clauses also help the North evade the rights of the people of the South. Our traditional and natural rights to our land, water, raw materials and our ecosystems are transformed into a system of norms, defined and evaluated by the very same Northern commercial interests that are responsible for most of the ecological damage. And there will be no norms for the total production process, only for the selected, isolated parts which bother those who make the rules.
Some friends in the North also invite us to support the imposition of social clauses as a way to fight against the deregulation of labour and the destruction of jobs. How? People in the South are struggling for the right to work, and the right to participate in the productive process in a an useful and dignified way. But the social clauses present the problem as a debate over whether the four percent of workers who have a job have the kind of trade union that someone in the North would like them to have. You won't save any jobs with these social clauses. You won't stop the destruction of trade union rights. How could you, since the main threat to trade union rights on a global scale is the deregulation of labour relations, an area the social clauses will never cover?
Social clauses are just another protectionist weapon for stopping the free trade of the South from penetrating Northern markets. They have the right to enter our markets, and the right to determine the conditions under which we will enter theirs!
This one-way free trade is a big problem for the third world. What we really need is a new kind of protectionism. Not GATTstyle protectionism in the interest of companies in the North. Not the protectionism which assures that certain vested interests may enjoy total control of all international trade. What we need is a protectionism which protects people and their environment. A protectionism which lets us make laws and take decisions to protect ourselves against free trade, deregulation, and other mechanisms of destruction. *
This article is a shortened transcription of Vandana
Shiva's intervention at the "Other Voices of the Planet"
Summit organised by the
Committee for Cancellation of Third Worls Debt (COCAD)
on 18 March 1995. This and other contributions are available (price sus10 or equivalent) in English French or Dutch from COCAD/CADTM, 29 Plantinstraat, Brussels, Belgium.